Tapwave tapping out?

The handheld gaming market may soon become less crowded. According to Gamasutra, Tapwave has said it will cease production of branded Zodiac products. The Tapwave Zodiac is a Palm OS-based gaming platform, known for its fairly robust media capabilities...and slim game offerings.

Evidently, Tapwave plans to continue operations as the producer of cobranded OEM (original equipment manufacturer) products. There's a strong indication this means the Tapwave Zodiac will soon be discontinued in favor of a similar product released under a new name and manufactured by a different company. Calls to Tapwave's US publicity contact were not returned, and e-mails were bounced back.

The Zodiac first hit store shelves in June of 2004, almost a year after Tapwave began taking preorders for the device on its Web site. The original price of $300 for the 32MB Zodiac 1 and $399 for the 128MB Zodiac 2 were recently reduced to $270 and $350 respectively. However, the device failed to grab a foothold in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The Zodiac has seen some growth in its game offerings, thanks to some new games from Sega, Atari, and Backbone Entertainment However, many are reissues of old titles, or ports of games from other platforms, such as Electronic Arts' Madden 2005 and Sega's Altered Beast.

Last October, the Zodiac entered the European market, but it's failed to make headway there as well.

For more information on the Tapwave Zodiac, check out GameSpot's review of the device.